Dust and Static
The sun hammered the cracked asphalt like it had a personal grudge. Jax Harlan squinted through the windshield of his battered pickup, one hand loose on the wheel, the other nursing a lukewarm beer. The desert stretched out forever—sagebrush, rusted hulks of old semis, and the occasional bleached cow skull. Just another supply run from the Reno ruins to the outpost at Dry Wells. Same as yesterday. Same as every day since the grid started failing more often and raiders made long hauls risky.
A flicker of static crawled across the truck’s old CB radio. Jax ignored it. Everything spat static these days. Solar flares, they said. Government blackouts. Bullshit, mostly. People were still shooting each other over canned beans and clean water. Nothing new under the burning sky.
His brother hadn't been back on a run to some town miles away two days past, and the damned radio wasn't responding.
This run was just a pretext for Jax to actually seek out Riley, but he was too much of a macho man to admit such, even to himself.
Then the sky cracked open.
A silent, jagged tear of sickly green light ripped across the horizon, like reality itself had been slashed open. The tear widened with terrifying speed, swallowing the sky. Jax’s truck lurched violently. The engine died instantly. Every light on the dash went wild before plunging into darkness. The world outside blurred into streaks of green and dust.
“What the hell—”
A crushing pressure slammed into his skull, as if the air itself was being sucked away. Jax gripped the wheel until his knuckles whitened. The truck was dragged forward, tires screeching even though the engine was dead. For one sickening moment, everything stretched — the desert, the sky, his own body.
Then the pressure released.
The truck skidded to a stop in a cloud of fine red dust. The engine was silent. The desert looked… wrong. The colors were harsher. The air tasted metallic. In the distance, faint green veins pulsed through the ground like living circuitry.
Jax rubbed his eyes. His head throbbed. Then words burned directly into his mind — visible only to him, cold and mechanical.
**[Dimensional Transfer Complete]**
**[You have entered the BioForge Domain]**
**[Subject: Jax Harlan – Scavenger Patchwork template assigned]**
**[Mutation Capacity: 2 out of 5]**
**[Base Stats: Vitality 11 | Reflexes 14 | Toughness 13 | Neural Speed 12]**
A new line appeared right after:
**[Welcome to the BioForge Domain, Drifter. Rewrite or be rewritten. First Script fragment detected nearby. Survive. Adapt. Evolve.]**
Something crawled under his skin like ants marching through his veins.
Outside, the desert had gone deathly quiet. Then a low, wet growl rolled from the sagebrush thirty yards ahead.
A shape shambled into view.
It used to be human. Maybe a hitchhiker. Now its arms hung too long, joints bending backward at impossible angles. Its skin bubbled and split, revealing glistening black cords that pulsed like exposed muscle. Its face was a mess of shifting plates, bone pushing outward even as Jax watched.
The thing locked eyes with him. Its jaw unhinged with a wet c***k.
Jax’s heart hammered. He lunged for the glove compartment, fingers closing around the old .45. He kicked the door open and rolled out, boots hitting hot sand.
The creature charged.
It moved faster than anything that broken should. Jax fired twice. The first round punched into its shoulder, spraying dark ichor. The second clipped its neck. It didn’t slow.
“f**k this—”
Pain lanced through his left forearm as claws raked across it. Fabric tore. Skin parted. Blood welled hot.
Then a new notification flashed in his mind:
**[Foreign biological material detected.]**
**[Script fragment available for scavenging. Accept? Yes/No]**
Jax didn’t think. He slammed his bleeding arm into the creature’s writhing limb.
A jolt shot up his nerves like live electricity.
**[Script fragment acquired: Chitin Plating v0.8]**
**[Inject now? Warning: Untested. 47% chance of glitch.]**
He chose yes.
Fire poured into his arm. His skin rippled as tiny hexagonal plates pushed outward with a sound like cracking ice. The bleeding stopped. The wound sealed under a glossy sheen that looked disturbingly like insect armor.
The creature swung again. This time its claws scraped across the plates with a metallic screech. Sparks flew, but they held.
Jax emptied the rest of the magazine into its chest, then drove his newly plated fist into its throat. Bone crunched. The thing collapsed in a twitching heap.
[Combat complete. Experience gained.]
[Level up! Scavenger Patchwork → Level 2]
[Mutation Capacity increased to 3 out of 5]
[New Script unlocked: Basic Debug Tool v1.0 — Allows minor on-the-fly code edits during combat.]
[Warning: Chitin Plating v0.8 is degrading. Side effect incoming in 3… 2… 1…]
The count down hit zero, and the plates dissolved with a wet pop. Underneath, his skin had turned raw and red. Veins stood out like black cables. A sharp burning itch spread up his shoulder, and his fingers twitched uncontrollably for several seconds.
Jax hissed through clenched teeth and leaned against the truck. “Feels like a bad hangover with extra steps.”
He looked down at the dead… thing. Its body was already breaking down, dissolving into black slurry that soaked into the sand. A small, glowing shard remained where its chest had been.
.Jax crouched and picked it up. The shard pulsed warmly against his palm.
**[New Script fragment: Venom Rewrite v0.5 — Integrate later?]**
Jax pocketed it, his mind racing. The sky was still torn with faint green afterglow. The desert felt… different. Wrong.
Riley had been running a supply route two towns over before this nightmare started.
Jax climbed back into the truck. The engine coughed once, then turned over with a reluctant growl.
“Alright, you digital son of a b***h,” he muttered, wiping sweat and ichor from his face. “Wherever the hell I am now… I’m finding my brother.”
He gunned the engine and pointed the truck toward the smoke rising on the distant horizon — what used to be the direction of Dry Wells. If anyone knew what the hell was happening, or where Riley might be, it’d be there.
Behind him, the dissolving corpse sank into the sand as the wind finally picked up again.
The notifications faded, but Jax could still feel them humming in his blood like a second heartbeat.
Something new had woken up inside him.
And it was hungry.
